


no time for a chat

by ziskandra



Category: My Fair Lady (1964)
Genre: First Kiss, Gen, M/M, POV Eliza Doolittle, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28130763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/pseuds/ziskandra
Summary: Eliza returns to 27A Wimpole Street to seek further phonetics instruction, and life soon resumes its familiar routine.Familiar until one fateful night, when Eliza overhears a heated discussion. It threatens to change everything and nothing at all.
Relationships: Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins, Eliza Doolittle & Hugh Pickering, Henry Higgins/Hugh Pickering
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	no time for a chat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoggledMonkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoggledMonkey/gifts).



Six months had passed since Eliza’s return to 27A Wimpole Street and the inhabitants of the house had settled back into a startlingly familiar routine. She might no longer spend her days minding her manners or reciting her vowels, but that didn’t mean her days of studying were at an end.

If anything, they had only begun.

Professor Higgins still had many tricks of his trade to teach and all it had cost her was a promise not to divulge his secrets without prior discussion, and to see through his course of material to its end.

The _actual_ agreement between them went unsaid, which amused Eliza to no end. To think a man who spoke at lengths about the beauty and the grandeur of the English language hadn’t the presence of mind to express his own feelings!

In any case, Higgins’s fears would be assuaged. She would not abandon him again, so long as he gave her no reason to do so. Eliza Doolittle was no quitter.

So, they had settled into their routine, and Eliza found herself learning to read all over again. The odd, wavy lines in the notebook Higgins was so fond of scribbling away in represented the various sounds of language. When she’d first started learning them, she’d asked how these were any different from the letters she already knew. Weren’t they already a written representation of speech?

Higgins had laughed, of course, his usual condescending smile stretching across his face as he so frequently forgot that others were not so learned as he! “Oh, my dear Eliza,” he’d said, and she’d remembered noting that he’d been using her name more often as of late, “these letters are different. Haven’t your lessons taught you that there are a multitude of ways to say the same word?”

She’d nodded, not daring to interrupt should it prompt him to begin his explanation from the very start again.

Satisfied, Higgins had continued. “Remember the night we met?” As though Eliza could forget. Not that she’d ever taken the professor to be the sentimental sort. “I was recording the peculiarities of _your_ speech,” he’d said, punctuating his words with a brief tap of his hand against Eliza’s shoulder, “which is most certainly unique to the people of Lisson Grove, I would say. But the way I or Colonel Pickering would say the same sentence would be quite different, and that is why it’s necessary to have the proper tools for the transcription. Indeed, these letters can be used for other languages altogether, although that is rather out of _my_ area of expertise.”

Pickering had continued where Higgins left off, forestalling another lecture about the intrinsic beauty of the English language. Instead, Pickering had expounded upon his experiences conducting fieldwork in India, what with their different dialects that were all but mutually unintelligible from one another.

“It’s truly worse than what’s happening in England?” Higgins had asked, always unhappy when not the centre of the conversation.

But Pickering had merely smiled patiently, the curve of his lips appearing to place a twinkle in his eye. “Oh, very much so,” he’d assured them.

And the days had passed very much in this pattern, and Eliza would not have it any other way. The professor even provided her with a small stipend in addition to her room and board, despite her protests that she wasn’t really contributing to the household.

“Nonsense,” he said, waving her away with the flap of a hand, a gesture that brokered no argument. And, well, she wasn’t going to waste her breath.

Late nights were common at the residence, the three of them burning the midnight oil, engrossed in their studies, in the sharing of anecdotes, in soaking in the simple pleasure of one another’s company.

Eliza had been the first to retire to bed this evening, having not slept well the night before. It was only as she begun to undress did she realise she’d left the book she’d been reading downstairs. She probably wouldn’t need it – would probably fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Still, she returned for it, but hesitated outside the door of the living room when she heard the voices of the two men talking. It certainly wasn’t unusual for them to stay up later should she head to bed first, but it was different this time. This was not a calm, casual discussion about the peculiarities of different makes of certain phonographs or the inner workings and politicking of the International Phonetics Association.

No. This sounded like an _argument_.

She didn’t think she’d ever heard Higgins and Pickering fight before. She wasn’t sure she’d even heard the colonel so much as raise his voice, always genteel in sharp contrast to the professor’s brusqueness. Eliza and Higgins provided the household with more than enough disagreement and repartee, not that it stopped Higgins from picking fights with his household staff nonetheless. She rather supposed his generosity with his pocketbook is what kept most of them in his employ, for surely it was not his sparkling personality nor his meticulous manners.

Creeping towards the entryway, Eliza all but pressed her ear to the door in order to hear their conversation more clearly.

“I simply cannot continue to impose upon your hospitality,” Pickering told Higgins. He was not as prone to the art of creative insult as his friend, but his voice had a firmness to it that Eliza had not heard since the day of her mishap at the Ascot.

“How many times must I tell you,” Higgins answered with the petulant peevishness she had grown so accustomed to when he was not getting his way, “you are not an imposition. Would I have welcomed you into my home otherwise? Spent morning, afternoon and evening discussing our works and studies?”

“Of course not,” Pickering answered. “I am most certainly grateful for the time I have spent here, and I will always think upon it with great fondness. But I do say, old man, it has been a year! I certainly cannot go on staying here, it is not…”

He trailed off. Eliza had never heard the colonel lost for words before, for he usually at least had his signature catchphrase should an occurrence take him by surprise, and she became so concerned she had missed something spoken softly she pressed harder against the door, inadvertently causing it to push open with a gentle creak.

If the men had heard anything, they did not let on, so Eliza called upon the stores of boldness which had served her well in her former life and chanced a peak through the crack of the door. Was it just her imagination, or were they standing awfully close to one another?

“It isn’t _what_?” asked Higgins, and even though she could scarcely see his face, his glower was fearsome, even from this distance.

Pickering cleared his throat, looking as though he had half a mind to put some distance between him and the professor but not quite managing to do so. “It is high time I returned to India,” he said instead, but even Eliza, not privy to the context to the conversation, could tell it was a diversion.

“ _Aha_!” exclaimed Higgins, proving that even one not well-versed in the nuances of other’s feelings could see Pickering’s deflection for what it is. “Leave then, if my company is so unbearable that you cannot bear to withstand it for another moment longer.”

“It is not your company I cannot withstand,” Pickering answered, his tone tinged with sadness.

Higgins, of course, would not take such reticence sitting down. She supposed that was why he was standing. “You’ve clearly some matter of importance on your mind,” he observed. “You know I’ve no mind for these social niceties. If you’ve something to tell me, then get on with it, man!”

The command seemed to spur on the colonel. Quite at odds with the way he’d previously held the careful, if paltry, distance between them, Pickering leant in and she could not see, she could not tell, but the professor’s reaction all but confirmed Eliza’s suspicions.

He’d _kissed_ him.

Pickering had kissed Higgins, and it was now the professor’s turn to be blessedly silent. She should wish it happen more often, honestly, but she would strangely miss his lectures, his usually predictable responses to the obstacles life sought to put in his way.

Oh, well. She highly doubted Higgins would stay quiet for long. He was most likely attempting to craft an articulate, refined responses to the advances of his bosom friend.

No scalding rebuke nor heartfelt confession followed, for instead Higgins held Pickering’s face in his hands and pulled it back towards his again and oh, _oh_ , he was kissing him _back_.

Eliza felt very much that she shouldn’t be witnessing this or whatever else might come of it; she was a good girl, no, a _lady,_ but in any case, certainly not a common voyeur, which is what she would escalate to if she remained rooted to the spot by the doorjamb. So, she gave her book up as lost for the evening and returned to her bedroom without her late-night reading.

Not that she would need any additional intellectual stimulation tonight, for her mind lingered on the scene she had witnessed downstairs as she returned to her room and readied herself for bed.

Perhaps Eliza should have worked it out before. It wasn’t as though Higgins was at all shy about his opinions about the so-called ‘fairer’ sex, and Pickering had never mentioned a wife, nor children, and Eliza had never had any desire to pry. Perhaps he was the type of man to be married to his work, much like she’d dismissed Higgins before tonight, or perhaps he’d been a young widower, like her own father would have been, if he’d had the presence of mind or motivation to marry her mother.

In any case, it was not any of her business, nor should she bother herself about it. Would it change anything in the grand scheme of their lives? She gathered the colonel had been dithering about his return to India because he did not know if his feelings were requited and faced with a long journey and a large distance between them, decided to hedge his bets.

It was a fact well-established that Pickering was a betting man, after all. 

As she searched and strived for slumber under the covers of her bed, Eliza found herself rather envying Professor Higgins. Not because she had any sort of designs on either man herself, no, certainly not, she was busy enough with the men to whom Mrs. Higgins introduced her, but because he’d been presented with Pickering’s feelings in such a clear and unequivocal way.

She hoped to find such a love for herself one day.

*

As the weeks went by, Eliza wondered if the men were going to tell her about the evolution of their relationship. Not that it was any of her business: she was certainly well aware that men of Pickering and Higgins' backgrounds had to be discrete in their personal affairs, in a way that her peers back in Lisson Grove had not. There was a certain amount of pretense involved in the membership of the upper classes; it had taken Eliza some time to realise, but she was not the only one who was putting on an act. If anything, Eliza was merely surprised that Professor Higgins had managed to keep it quiet for so long: there was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, loath as he was to actually admit to his emotions. 

Nonetheless, there was a perceptible shift in their dynamic, noticeable even if she hadn't had the additional context of overhearing their conversation that fateful night. They had always been comfortable around each other, the three of them, thinking nothing of late-night conversations and casual touches, but Eliza would see it sometimes, in the corner of her eye: touches of the hands that lingered beyond the bounds of brief embraces and mere companionship, the way they looked at one another when they thought she wasn't paying attention... 

After a month or so, Eliza decided she'd had enough. Lifting her head from her careful recreation of the symbols of the Higgins Universal Alphabet, watching the two men with their heads so close together in deep conversation, she spoke with an air of affected breeziness. "I'm very happy for the both of you," she said, before returning her attention to her papers. She smiled to herself at the professor's splutter, so unsure was he of how he wanted to start his sentence that he ended up sounding quite unsophisticated indeed. He muttered about implications and assumptions before eventually landing upon, _How did you know_? 

Pickering was quick to interject, so accustomed by now to smoothing over interactions between the professor and Eliza. "This doesn't change our circumstances an iota," he said firmly, in that calm and reassuring way of his, and although Eliza had long discarded any fears that it might, her concerns only lasting a day or two after her initial eavesdropping (what if they had decided they wanted the house to themselves!?), she had found a strange sort of comfort in how little their dynamic had changed, on the balance of it all. 

Eliza looked up once more, to find the two men holding hands in front of her. "I know," she said, in her own sort of assurance, and was it her imagination, or did Higgins let out a breath of relief? 

She would still like to marry one day but in the meantime, she couldn't help but think her friendships - the little family-of-sorts they had built for themselves - was perfect the way it was. 


End file.
